Welcome to Nurture Your Journey. I am not going to pretend to be anything I am not, so right off I am going to share that this is my first experience being a “blogger.” My website is an invitation to nurture, heal, create, explore. There are many ways that unfolds in my own life. I can’t define what that looks like for you. It may be in individual spiritual direction/companionship, taking a workshop, just reading a blog post or one of my poems.

I know for myself that the experience of creating this website has definitely been a creative process. And it has been a wonderful opportunity to invite a community of friends to come alongside me. I did not do this alone! Perhaps the first seed was planted when I took the risk and, with the encouragement of Dawn Thompson at Portland Women Writers, developed and offered my first grief and loss workshop utilizing writing and the labyrinth (two of my loves.) With that came the realization that a website for folks to refer to is the norm these days.

Wheels started turning. Next I found a design from an artist friend that I liked, but wasn’t available for commercial use. However that offered the seed of an idea. I met with another talented artist friend, Lanette, and with a few meetings, many emails and texts about what felt “right” and “didn’t quite fit” things seemed, well, almost but not quite “there.” Then, be it the Divine, God, or whatever you would like to ascribe it to, Lanette was visiting an artist friend in LA over the Christmas holiday who “just happened” to have a book on labyrinths and the four elements (both design elements I wanted in my logo) and the logo flowed out of her (which included a type of pen she didn’t usually have.) A text message of the drawing. A big “THAT’S IT!” And the logo was settled. Whew.

Now, I work four days a week as a hospice chaplain, so finding time to design a website in the next 12 months would be close to impossible. But the next miracle came about in the offering of a friend who came about through my mother. (I’ll save that story for another day.) Barbara was willing to take on the task of my website to re-hone her skills after taking time out to raise children. Again, like with Lanette, we spent time meeting, texting, emailing, sorting through my ideas, her researching, clarifying, my puzzlement at this new way of being in the world (I don’t even do Facebook yet!) Fortunately Barbara is a very patient and gracious person.

As I write this blog, this is one of the last things that needed to be “done” before going “live.” Is everything perfect? Not even close! But that has been part of my journey. It doesn’t have to be perfect because I am not perfect. If I wait until every page, every word, has been triple checked, this website would never see your screen. I would never feel it was good enough. But I’m ready to let it blossom. So a thank you to the wonderful friends that helped me on this journey--from logo, to web design, to head shots, to encouragement. Many of them have links on my pages. Please check them out. I look forward to connecting with you as the days unfold. --anne